When swim instructors start teaching formal swimming strokes in their learn to swim classes, we often forget how monotonous the repetition involved with mastering a new stroke becomes.  This monotony leads leads to boredom, and boredom leads to uninspired students.   Uninspired students leads to students “going through the motions.”  If your students are “going through [...]

Dear Swim Profesor: I hope you can help w/more advice. I”m still a beginner swimmer. My teacher told me I need to work on my kicking, and I’d like to get some fins. Saw some lightweight flippers at Todd & Moore, and then just regular swim fins (I guess). I think I need “short fins” [...]

How Can You Make Your Swim Instructors Smile? Dear Swim Professor: How would you encourage, insist, demand, or coax an excellent instructor into smiling and quit frowning?  I have tried everything.  He loves what he does… he just doesn’t and cannot display pleasant facial expressions, and has a natural “concerned” look most of the time.  [...]

While many parents may think there’s not much to teaching a child to swim, you know that is far from the truth.  There’s a lot that goes into being a great swim instructor, and like most anything in life–you can learn from your mistakes.  So keep the faith.  You are always getting better. Here are [...]

Dear Swim Professor: How would I get a beginning swimmer to kick properly with the kick board? I used the kinesthetic feedback and manipulated their legs for them. I even had swim lessons student show me the difference between good and bad kicks, but they reverted right back to kicking with their legs up under their [...]

Dear Swim Professor, I’ve been a swim instructor for 30 years and love my job.  I generally teach infants and young children to swim, and have prided myself in turning reluctant swimmers around.  That is the most rewarding part of my job. This summer, I’ve taken on a 13 yr old girl, much older than [...]

Hello Swim Professor!   I am a new instructor. I have a friend up North in CT who has an almost 3 year old who is TERRIFIED of the pool. She clings to mom’s neck. She has had a couple of scary incidents with inhaling water (falling into a kiddie pool and not being able [...]

Teaching the Pop-up Breath:  A Child Centered Swimming Lessons Approach I have been teaching swimming since 1983.   This is hard to admit, but I have been teaching longer than most of my instructors have been alive!  And of course over the past 28 years, my methods and approaches have changed.  One technique I continue to [...]

One of the most difficult things for a swim instructor is developing the confidence that YOU CAN turn most any fearful swim lesson student into a happy swimmer.  No matter how scared the child may appear, you can do it! Here are a few strategies that work: 1. Take control. Don’t allow the parent to [...]

Today’s blog is a response to a post against the use of Life jackets and Flotation devices.  Here are my thoughts: First off, Life Jackets save lives. An absolute MUST for non-swimmers in residential pools and lakes, especially if they are not within arm’s reach of an adult.  I think most would agree that a [...]